Using virtualization to use CPU resources more efficiently in IT is such a familiar concept, it’s hard to think of a time before it was commonplace. The same cannot be said for using GPU resources, which in many organizations still operates at a one node per one user experience. To address this, VMware acquired Bitfusion in 2019 and is now rolling out their tech into vSphere 7. This allows users to request GPU resources using the bitfusion command, which can then aggregate and distribute resources over the network. Christopher Kusek heard some of the initial details at Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld 2019, and is excited to see them rolling out. He’s sees this as evidence of the maturation of ML and AI workloads in the enterprise, and Bitfusion will let organizations make best use of their existing GPU infrastructure.
VMware Adds Distributed IPS/IDS to NSX
In this piece, Justin Warren looks at how VMware is adding security features to its networking efforts, something they recently highlighted at Security Field Day. Part of this involves adding intrusion detection/prevention to NSX. For Justin, support for groups and tags has been a vital inclusion. Groups allow admins to group objects together and set common rules against that group. Meanwhile tags let you add arbitrary attributes that follow an information scheme. Combined these two features can provide a way for admins to compliment their packet policies for security. Justin still thinks VMware needs to further operationalize these features to make them truly comprehensive for network security, but clearly the effort is being put into their platforms.
How VMware Marketplace Makes Simple to Deploy Vendors and Open Source Solutions
Raff Poltronieri joined us for his 7th full Field Day event with Cloud Field Day. At the event, he heard from VMware’s Product Marketing & Strategy Manager Nee Palaka, who led a deep dive on the VMware Marketplace. Raff really liked the potential of VMware Marketplace, which lets vendors reach VMware’s customer base, and also provides an opportunity for customers to use and install third party solutions plus open source products inside their VMware environments. He sees three main use cases for Marketplace, simplifying moving customers to the cloud, maximizing their investment in VMware’s platform, and ensuring developer flexibility.
VMware Cloud on AWS: Gaining Momentum and Maturity
Ather Beg is a fan of VMware Cloud on AWS, so he was glad that the company spent much of their recent Cloud Field Day presentation on the subject. As a delegate at the event, he got to hear about some of the exciting enhancements to VMware Cloud on AWS, including Elastic DRS Rapid Scale-Out and VMware Cloud Director Service for MSPs. The former let’s admins set Elastic RDS policy to configure a SDDC to scale-up quickly by adding up to 4 hosts at a time while reacting to a scale-out event, rather than timing out after two. The latter allows MSPs to use VMware Cloud on AWS as their multi-tenanted platform to serve customers. Overall a lot of interesting refinements to the service.
VMC on AWS: 5 Reasons You Should Give a Damn!
Jason Benedicic was one of the delegates at our Security Field Day event last week and got to hear from VMware, and came away with a new appreciation for VMware Cloud on AWS. Much of the appeal comes from his experience refactoring applications, moving big monolithic apps to the cloud can be quite challenging. These are often tightly coupled with other infrastructure components, meaning moving to the cloud can be a very gradual process as you disentangle everything. VMware Cloud on AWS allows organizations to move the existing application and all its dependencies as-is to a familiar operating environment, as close the cloud as possible. Jason breaks down a lot of the concerns admins have with this approach, and thinks this is a viable solution for many organizations with legacy applications.
Security Field Day
Security Field Day is the newest event in the Field Day family, but it’s consistently featured the mix of industry leading presenters and innovative startups the event series is known for. At our more recent Security Field Day, VMware took the stage. While the company is synonymous with its virtualization solutions, they also have an impressive security portfolio. During the event, they discussed VMware Service-defined Firewall, NSX Distributed IDS/IPS, using NSX Intelligence as a distributed analytics engine, and their Intelligent Web Application Firewall solution. It was a packed session, so be sure to check out the full video.
VMware TKG
VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid represents a big shift for VMware and their long history of virtualization. Larry Smith was lucky to be delegate at Cloud Field Day to get to hear an extensive session on it at the event. With Kubernetes becoming increasingly important to IT infrastructure, understanding TKG as the core of core component VMware’s Kubernetes deployments is key. Larry breaks down the architecture of TKG, how organizations can deploy it across a number of personas, and how it integrates into vSphere. Be sure to check out the piece before digging into the presentaiton video
DR to VMware Cloud on AWS With Site Recovery Manager
In this piece, Justin Warren considers how VMware has really embraced cloud in a big way. After some attempts at building their own cloud, VMware can concentrate on what it does well, which is providing a familiar management environment for enterprises to manage complexity at scale. This approach shows in what Justin saw at Cloud Field Day with VMware Site Recovery, which uses vSphere replication on VMware on AWS to move VMs from one cluster to another.
Moving Workloads With VMware HCX – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
After hearing from VMware at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss moving VMware workloads with the VMware HCX. Do admins want this? Don’t they really want to move work between Kubernetes clusters instead? Or is that even the right question? It kind of was, but it kind of wasn’t. Kubernetes & containers are not simple drop-in replacements for VMware & virtual machines. Therefore, HCX has use cases, and they explain what they think they are.
Day Two Cloud 047: Highlights and Analysis From Cloud Field Day 7
In this episode of the Day Two Cloud podcast, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance discuss some of the presentations from Cloud Field Day. They looked at the big presentations from VMware, SolarWinds, and startup Pensando in the episode, specifically focusing on VMware Cloud on AWS, monitoring cloud performance with SolarWinds, and Pensando’s SmartNIC to offload a server’s network processing. Having two great hosts discussing the latest cloud goodness makes for a good podcast.
VMware Makes Kubernetes Even More So With Tanzu
In this post, Justin Warren considers how VMware has gone about integrating Kubernetes into its establishing management platforms, something he heard all about at Cloud Field Day. This is an inherently complex task, if for no other reason than the Kubernetes landscape is still changing and updating rapidly. Any kind of integration would seemingly have to take that on as well. For Justin, a lot of the strength of VMware’s position with virtualization is that it is a known quantity that organizations have a continuing investment with over time. Adding in Kubernetes with Tanzu Kubernetes Grid doesn’t strictly play to that strength. For Justin, the key will be for VMware to simplify the solution over time as it learns how customers actually use Kubernetes.
VMware Embracing Terraform: Infrastructure as Code
Chris Grundemann was a little surprised when he heard VMware’s Narayan Bharadwaj mention Terraform during the opening presentation of Cloud Field Day. In fact, what he said is that VMware is “embracing Terraform in a pretty big way” as part of their focus on Infrastructure as Code. This struck Chris for two reasons. One, you wouldn’t be off-base to think of Terraform as a competitor to several VMware products. And two, because of the things that it makes possible. He digs into more of the specifics in this post.
Automating Disaster Recovery Is Risky Business – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
Ned Bellavance and Ethan Banks think through VMware’s DRaaS offering, pondering the pros and cons of automation disaster recovery & business continuity. Sounds great, but are users testing regularly? What’s the failback process after the disaster is over? VMware went into detail during their Cloud Field Day presentation, and Ethan and Ned break it down in this episode of Day Two Cloud.
VMC on AWS Is More Cloud Like All the Time – Day Two Cloud Podcast Video
After hearing from VMware at Cloud Field Day, Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance consider VMware Cloud on AWS now that a couple of years have gone by since the service launched. Is it really cloud yet, or just VMware in a colo alongside AWS? It’s really both. They dig into it on a recent episode of the Day Two Cloud Podcast. Be sure to check it out, watch VMware’s presentation from the event, and let us know what you thing!
Cloud Field Day 7 – VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware is not an unfamiliar site at Field Day events, and most recently, they graced us with a presentation at Cloud Field Day. Ed Horley was a delegate for the event and got to hear a lot about VMware Cloud on AWS. For Ed, it seems like VMware has deftly navigated the often daunting challenges of adopting their established enterprise business model into the public cloud. The solution extends the ability to run cloud workloads to the scale and flexibility that AWS provides while also providing native hooks and features from AWS that extend what an enterprise can leverage from both VMware and AWS. It’s an impressive achievement that has a lot of value for organizations with deep VMware investments.
VDI as a Service Is Better Than VDI
One of the most familiar in-jokes among IT folks is declaring a new year to be “the year of VDI.” This joke usually elicits a droll smile or perhaps a barely noticeable wince. The reason it persists year after year is that it speaks to a larger truth, while VDI always seems like it’s about to go from a niche solution to mass market, it always somehow stays in its place. Enrico Signoretti heard from VMware at Cloud Field Day recently, and while he doesn’t think it will ever be the year of VDI, he does think that the time for VDI as a service might be here. While expense will always be an issue with the technology, VMware showed that the security benefits and ease of deployment can more than prove its worth.
Marketplaces Are Changing the Way We Do Enterprise IT
Enrico Signoretti has been looking into the increasing importance of marketplaces for unstructured data management solutions. These allow IT to add functionalities to your infrastructure quickly, without having to go through a complex purchase, installation, and configuration process. Enrico got to see two examples of these at recent Field Day events. At Cloud Field Day, VMware showed off their marketplace for VMware Cloud on AWS, with another marketplace on display at Tech Field Day Virtual with Red Hat. With more mature technology, Enrico see marketplaces not just as the purview of cloud providers, but rather being extended to hybrid cloud platforms and eventually the private enterprise marketplace.
Cloud Field Day 7 (#CFD7): A Heads-Up
We were lucky to have Ather Beg joins us as a delegate for Cloud Field Day. He always brings keen insight and extensive industry experience to offer a truly unique voice around the delegate table, virtual or otherwise. In this post, he gives a look at each of the presenters and why their session may be of interest to a wider audience. There was VMware, no stranger to Field Day, doing two sessions on their VMware Cloud on AWS solution. He was also interested in Stellus’ key-value store approach to storage to provide exceptional performance using protocols like NFS. There was also a presentation from SolarWinds, as well as a look into the Pensando Distributed Services Platform. Be sure to check out all the presentation videos to get to speed with the latest from the event.
Exorcising Network Ghosts With VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer
Is your networking haunted? Or do you feel like problems are happening and you can’t find them? Who you gonna call? Tom Hollingsworth looks at how VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer can help you bust the ghosts that haunt your network and prove that the problems are floating around somewhere else. While definitely a spooky topic, luckily Tom found VMware’s presentation from Networking Field Day to be anything but.
vSphere 7 and Kubernetes – Should Customers Wait?
On this video from Keith Townsend, he talks with CTO Dose co-host Joep Piscaer about vSphere 7 and his impressions of the Kubernetes integration. Project Tanzu Grid is the updated branding for Project Pacific. They break down if VMware’s initial release lived up to the not inconsiderable hype. They also discuss if customers should be quick to latch onto Tanzu, or wait for further development. Watch as Keith and Joep recap their impressions from VMware’s Tech Field Day presentation.